Lightning Source is opening a plant in Australia in June. I asked my rep about pricing, but they don't have any info yet. However, I'm hoping this will be a game changer and help reduce CS's inflated shipping charges.

Lulu's printing might be cheaper than CS because they have a printer in Melbourne. Also, have you contacted SOS in Sydney for a quote?

I suspect that the CreateSpace business model is predicated on the assumption that most publications will sell only a handful of copies, or maybe none at all. These low sellers probably form a very high percentage of the CreateSpace catalogue. Since there are fixed costs for each title, it is prudent to make sure that they are covered, regardless of sales volume. The only way to do this is to make the author a source of revenue, too. I am quite sure that the advertised shipping costs with CreateSpace are nothing like what they pay, as they will surely have negotiated one of the world's best deals with their shipping agents. This does, however, allow them to advertise per-book charges that are extremely low, and therefore very inviting!

I would be interested to learn what others are being charged by Lulu, with some actual examples. I never thought it would make sense to deal with two POD companies, but the difficulties in getting paid by CreateSpace (I live outside the USA) are giving me grave doubts about my future with them.

Thank you for the reply. It made sense. It just shocked me that the price of 10 6 x 9 books was half the price of the shipping cost at CS! It sure made me stop and think about it all.

I will check out SOS in Sydney and see what they have to offer.

Can't wait for Lightening Source to get the wheels turning. The thing is, it's great having everything in one place, like a supermarket, so I don't have to recompile etc over and over again. I think CS has great community support. I love their printed product too, so they have a good contact there. The postage almost puts the lid on everything for me. Surely they can make a deal with a printer in Melbourne, Brisbane, or Sydney? There are oodles around.

I am between a rock and a hard place now, because I prefer the copy at CS but the price and maybe delivery time is giving me angst.

I had some books delivered before Christmas and they got here on the very last day of school breakup, so I had a big rush. They took two weeks to get here from CS.

If CS had a cheaper postage maybe more authors would order their books? I would certainly do so.

Happy New Year Michelle. My Runaway Princesses is up and running. It's had around 300 downloads at Smashwords (free to download). On Createspace it includes your name because you did help me more than you know, saying nice things about it. So encouraging, that's you.

I really took note of your suggestions. Thanks for that. It may turn out to be a best seller? Ha ha.

I actually didn't realize they would put the names of my lovely friends right up front. I hope you don't mind?

I'm really looking forward to LSOZ, and having all my needs met in (almost) one place. CS will always have a small role, most importantly the Community, but there are too many hurdles they make us jump unnecessarily for it to be a viable long term solution for international authors.

Thanks for your suggestions. Interesting thoughts there. I am now thinking about trying out Wordclay. Their covers are limited but if they can ship at better rates then they will be in the running for my buck and books.

What does it matter if they have policies. If the price is too high it's out of the running as far as shipping is concerned. I had a huge shipping bill for my last consignment but it was a lot of books, so I thought it was just acceptable and I really wanted to get the books here.

I think we should keep talking about this subject until something gets done for us all. Better shipping = more shipping.

Maaku, check out this link as well. They are ebook greats as far as I can see. I love this site.

You can put your book at whatever price you want, or leave it free to download. The formatting is a bit different but Mark Coker gives exact instructions in their pdf file, and once you get into the swing of it, it's great. It really works. It is just no fuss. In fact I am so used to their site now I format all my books in that way and just change them when uploading to Lulu, Createspace and others.